Editing, not "correcting"
21/April/2009 06:16 PM Filed in: On Editors &
WritersEditors
Serving Writers
Friends
who teach on the college level sometimes ask me if I
have to "correct" a lot of "mistakes" in scholarly
texts. Certainly I do correct any errors that have
slipped into the text, but much of what I do
as
a
copy editor has nothing to do with mistakes. It's
more a question of "translating" the text from one
set of conventions to another.
For example, a scholar in the humanities would probably follow MLA style in preparing a dissertation. Once the dissertation is rewritten as a book and accepted for publication, the manuscript will very likely need to follow a different style guide. Even if the scholar makes a good attempt to reformat documentation into the endnote style that the Chicago Manual of Style, for example, suggests, a few remnants of the original MLA style will probably remain. It's not that the MLA style is "wrong." It's simply not the style that the publisher follows.
I don't think, "Ah-ha! Another mistake!" I'm more likely to think, as I reformat the documentation, "Oh, another one slipped through. Glad I caught it." To be absolutely honest, I'm thinking something along the lines of "Change period to comma; insert parentheses." If I stopped to congratulate myself every time I make the text consistent, the editing process would take much too long.
This kind of reformatting was especially important when I edited a collection of essays by several authors. Experts in a variety of fields submitted chapters to the book; the disciplines represented included urban planning, journalism, psychology, communications, and literature. The scholars had formatted their original articles according to the conventions of their different disciplines. Some had used endnotes, some had used footnotes, and some had used parenthetical citations within the text. But retaining all those styles within one book would have been distracting at best and confusing at worst. So I "translated" documentation according to one system, in this case, parenthetic citations. None of these changes were "corrections" of "mistakes."
The result of the editing is a text that is consistent throughout so that readers can concentrate on the research and insights of the authors.
For example, a scholar in the humanities would probably follow MLA style in preparing a dissertation. Once the dissertation is rewritten as a book and accepted for publication, the manuscript will very likely need to follow a different style guide. Even if the scholar makes a good attempt to reformat documentation into the endnote style that the Chicago Manual of Style, for example, suggests, a few remnants of the original MLA style will probably remain. It's not that the MLA style is "wrong." It's simply not the style that the publisher follows.
I don't think, "Ah-ha! Another mistake!" I'm more likely to think, as I reformat the documentation, "Oh, another one slipped through. Glad I caught it." To be absolutely honest, I'm thinking something along the lines of "Change period to comma; insert parentheses." If I stopped to congratulate myself every time I make the text consistent, the editing process would take much too long.
This kind of reformatting was especially important when I edited a collection of essays by several authors. Experts in a variety of fields submitted chapters to the book; the disciplines represented included urban planning, journalism, psychology, communications, and literature. The scholars had formatted their original articles according to the conventions of their different disciplines. Some had used endnotes, some had used footnotes, and some had used parenthetical citations within the text. But retaining all those styles within one book would have been distracting at best and confusing at worst. So I "translated" documentation according to one system, in this case, parenthetic citations. None of these changes were "corrections" of "mistakes."
The result of the editing is a text that is consistent throughout so that readers can concentrate on the research and insights of the authors.
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